Is watching Game of Thrones a mortal sin?

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2354  Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.

The pornography of Alessandro Serenelli's time was basically the sort of stuff that sailors would have pinned up beside their bunks. It was a major influence and corruption in his life. He lost his mind to it.

What would he say of the material in Game of Thrones? People call it "soft porn" because it gets compared to the "hardcore" stuff on the internet. Yet Game of Thrones is totally hardcore in comparison to the pornography of Serenelli's time (from what I've read in descriptions about the show).

Isn't it interesting, the relativistic sliding scales we use in order to immediately excuse ourselves?

I was thinking about this because I just read this article at StAR about Game of Thrones.

Seems the majority of Catholic news services,

be they a television network or some blog, are unreliable and untrustworthy - at least when it concerns Pope Francis. Kind of like the mainstream media. The commentators of these Catholic social media sites and networks sow confusion by their impromptu statements.

"Arroyo really should be sued for slander."

Exactly.

Catholic in Brooklyn has a most excellent post on the statements made by Pope Francis concerning marriage. Really, it's amazing to see the difference between what the Holy Father actually said and the cut and paste canards that the news outlets/blogs/apostolates feed their readers, listeners and viewers.

Update: here's another good article.

Such an alright film

"I'm your hucklebearer" -- love that line.

To be self-centered is to incapacitate yourself

An amazing paradox. The more self-centered a person is the more incapable they become of carrying out their own responsibilities. This works conversely: seeing to our own responsibilities and to our own duties carries us out of ourselves, and we become aware and sensitive to others.

The failure to carry out one's own responsibilities is not just a failure; it becomes the way of one's life; it is to live irresponsibly. There is one kind of person who lives irresponsibly: the one who is incapacitated. He may be strong - mentally, physically, and seemingly spiritually, but with regards to the most mundane forms of justice, of doing what ought to be done because it is right, he is a total midget.

The world is full to brimming with such people. They conjure up the most fantastic entitlements to themselves but cannot meet the most simple demands of one's ordinary duties.

To live responsibly is to live. The more responsible that a person becomes, the more duties he has to meet; because the more of life that he meets with. A person becomes "just".

Hence another paradox: duties well performed become a kind of love affair - very different from what we imagine when we think of the word "duty".

Feel the Burn

Sound Money

Tally sticks - Image Source

"King Henry expanded the use of tally sticks to include the collection of taxes by local sheriffs, creating a demand for them, and the sticks began to circulate as a form of money as a result. Revenues owed to the Crown were collected in this manner, and the tally stick system formed the basis of the British Empire until the formation of the Bank of England at the end of the 17th century. Tally sticks found their way into medieval courts as evidence, and into the works of William Shakespeare, who referred to them in Sonnet 122.2 from Henry VI: 'nor need I tallies thy dear love to score.'" --Money Matters: The Tally Stick System

"More than in the Vatican Gardens, with their beauty..."

your goodness is the place where I dwell: I feel protected."







H/T: Dr. Dawn Eden Goldstein

Money is not a store of value

Value is already decided, and set, the minute anyone even thinks about engaging in a transaction. And if they aren't thinking of engaging in a transaction, it is still the projection of transaction that decides value.

Each has his needs and wants, and each recognizes that there is another who has needs and wants. Transaction is thus born.

Attempting to make "sound money" is complete idiocy.

The only way that money ever comes into existence, no matter what, is through a transaction.

A transaction involves two or more parties.

Money does not preexist. Money does not exist prior to the transaction by which it comes into existence.

All the money you own and have ever owned came into existence because of some transaction. All the way right to the very beginning of that money is a transaction. The money began as a transaction. No matter what form of money. If it's "gold money" it came into existence in the very same way.

An economy is a social construct no matter what.

There is what we as individuals ascertain as having value and there is what society together ascertains as having value. This is called the common good. It actually benefits the individual. Very often, in fact, more often than very often, what the individual ascertains as having value and what society together ascertains as having value are harmonious, if not one and the same. Very often what the individual ascertains as having value comes directly from what the common good has already decided.

Everyone needs food. Everyone needs shelter. Everyone needs clothes. More than these, everyone has something positive to bring about, linked to their unique vocation, but are unable to do so because their basic needs cannot be met, or met in a way that is sane and proportionate in time.

Oh, but value doesn't really exist unless we make the money transactable between owners of gold! Yeah, good luck with that. LOL!

Money is a store of value? LOL!

Stonewalling Benedict and Stoning Francis

The Novus Ordo is the Traditional Mass

...It is not appropriate to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were “two Rites”. Rather, it is a matter of a twofold use of one and the same rite. ...

...There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. ...

 And if the Novus Ordo is said in Latin, then it is the Traditional Latin Mass.